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America has drawn to its shores individuals from all over the world. This has produced a blending of different ways of life that many Americans find disturbing. Ishmael Reed, however, sees this mixing of customs as neither new nor a threat. On the contrary, it is typically American.
美国吸引世界各国的人去它那里。这就导致了不同生活方式的交融，对此，不少美国人感到不安。伊什梅尔·里德却认为，这种不同习俗的糅合既不是新事物，也不是什么威胁。相反，这正是典型的美国风格。
What's American about America?
美国的特色是什么？
Ishmael Reed
伊什梅尔·里德
An item from the New York Times, June 23, 1983: "At the annual Lower East Side Jewish Festival yesterday, a Chinese woman ate a pizza slice in front of Ty Thuan Duc's Vietnamese grocery store. Beside her a Spanish-speaking family patronized a cart with two signs: 'Italian Ices' and 'Kosher by Rabbi Alper'."
1983年6月23日《纽约时报》的一则报道：“在昨天举行的每年一度的下东区犹太节上，一位华裔女子在越南杂货店前吃着比萨。在她身边，一个说西班牙语的家庭正在光顾一辆小推车，车上有两块牌子，写着：'意大利冰淇淋'和'阿尔帕拉比犹太食品'。”
On the day before Memorial Day, 1983, a poet called me to describe a city he had just visited. He said that one section included mosques, built by the Islamic people who dwelled there. Attending his reading, he said, were large numbers of Hispanic people, 40,000 of whom lived in the same city. He was not talking about a legendary city located in some mysterious region of the world. The city he'd visited was Detroit.
1983年阵亡将士纪念日的前一天，一位诗人在电话里向我描述了他刚刚去过的一个城市。他说该市某处有不少清真寺，都是当地的伊斯兰教信徒建造的。他说，该城共住有4万西班牙裔美国人，其中许多人前来参加了他的诗歌朗诵会。他说的不是坐落在世界某个神秘地方的充满传奇色彩的城市。他去的城市是底特律。
A few months before, as I was visiting Texas, I heard the taped voice used to guide passengers to their connections at the Dallas Airport announcing items in both Spanish and English. This trend is likely to continue; after all, for some southwestern states like Texas, where the largest minority is now Mexican-American, Spanish was the first written language and the Spanish style lives on in the western way of life.
几个月前我去得克萨斯，在达拉斯机场里听见指引乘客上联运飞机的广播分别用西班牙语和英语播报航班信息。这一潮流很可能继续下去，别忘了，在像得克萨斯这样的西南部的一些州，墨西哥裔美国人是目前最大的少数民族，西班牙语是首选的书面语言，而西班牙风格也一直存在于西部生活中。
Shortly after my Texas trip, I sat in a campus auditorium at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee as a Yale professor -- whose original work on the influence of African cultures upon those of the Americas has led to his ostracism from some intellectual circles -- walked up and down the aisle like an old-time Southern evangelist, dancing and drumming the top of the lectern, illustrating his points before some Afro-American intellectuals and artists who cheered and applauded his performance. The professor was "white." After his lecture, he conversed with a group of Milwaukeeans -- all of whom spoke Yoruban, though only the professor had ever traveled to Africa.
得克萨斯之行后不久，我坐在位于密尔沃基市的威斯康星大学的校园礼堂里，一位耶鲁大学教授--他那些论述非洲文化对美洲文化所产生的影响的有独到见解的著作致使他遭到某些知识界人士的摈弃—如同旧时南方福音传道士那样，在过道上走过来走过去，手舞足蹈，还拍击讲桌桌面，在一些对他的表演报以喝彩鼓掌的非洲裔美国知识分子和艺术家前阐述着自己的观点。这位教授是白人。讲座之后，他与一群全都说约鲁巴语的密尔沃基人交谈，但只有这位教授真正去过非洲。
One of the artists there told me that his paintings, which included African and Afro-American mythological symbols and imagery, were hanging in the local McDonald's restaurant. The next day I went to McDonald's and snapped pictures of smiling youngsters eating hamburgers below paintings that could grace the walls of any of the country's leading museums. The manager of the local McDonald's said, "I don't know what you boys are doing, but I like it," as he commissioned the local painters to exhibit in his restaurant.
当地一位艺术家告诉我，他的一些含有非洲和美国黑人神话中的象征和意象的画作悬挂在当地一家麦当劳快餐店里。第二天我去了那家麦当劳快餐店，拍下了一些坐在画下吃汉堡包的面带微笑的青年人，那些画挂在美国任何一家著名博物馆里都会增光添彩。麦当劳的经理对我说：“我不知道你们这是在干什么，不过我觉得挺好，”是他允许当地画家把他们的作品拿到店里展示。
Such blurring of cultural styles occurs in everyday life in the United States to a greater extent than anyone can imagine. Yet members of the nation's present educational and cultural elite still cling to the notion that the United States belongs to some vaguely defined entity they refer to as "Western civilization," by which they mean, presumably, a civilization created by people of Europe, as if Europe can even be viewed as completely uninfluenced by the rest of the world. Is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which includes Turkish marches, a part of Western civilization? Or the late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century French paintings, whose creators were influenced by Japanese art? And what of the cubists, through whom the influence of African art changed modern painting? Or the surrealists, who were so impressed with the art of the Pacific Northwest Indians that, in their map of North America, Alaska dwarfs the lower forty-eight states in size?
这种文化风格模糊化的现象在美国的日常生活中屡见不鲜，远远超出人们的想象。然而，当今美国教育文化界的特权分子仍紧抱着固有的观念，认为美国属于某种定义模糊的他们称之为“西方文明”的实体，他们所指的想必就是由欧洲人创造的文明，仿佛欧洲可以被视为完全不受世界其他地区影响似的。借用了土耳其进行曲的贝多芬第九交响曲是不是西方文明的一部分？19世纪末和20世纪的法国绘画呢？那些画的创作者可都是深受日本艺术影响的。那些立体主义画家呢？通过他们，非洲艺术的影响改变了现代绘画。还有那些超现实主义艺术家呢？他们为太平洋西北部的印第安艺术所深深打动，于是在他们所绘的北美地图上，阿拉斯加使得其他48州显得很小。
Are the Russians, who are often criticized for their adoption of "Western" ways by Tsarist dissidents in exile, members of Western civilization? And what of the millions of Europeans who have black African and Asian ancestry, black Africans having occupied several European countries for hundreds of years? Are these "Europeans" a part of Western civilization? Or the Hungarians, who originated across the Urals in a place called Greater Hungary? Or the Irish, who came from the Iberian Peninsula?
经常被流亡中的拥护沙皇的持不同政见者指责为采用“西方”方式的俄罗斯人是不是西方文明的成员？千百万祖先为非洲黑人和亚洲人的欧洲人呢，数百年来一直生活在一些欧洲国家的非洲黑人呢？这些“欧洲人”是不是西方文明的一部分？还有祖辈居住乌拉尔山脉彼侧一个叫做大马扎尔的地方的匈牙利人呢？还有来自伊比利亚半岛的爱尔兰人呢？
Even the notion that North America is part of Western civilization because our "system of government" is derived from Europe is being challenged by Native American historians who say that the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin especially, were actually influenced by the system of government that had been adopted by the Iroquois hundreds of years prior to the arrival of Europeans.
就连因为我们的“政体”源自欧洲，所以北美是西方文明的一部分这一观念也遭到了美国本土历史学家的质疑。他们声称，事实上那些开国元勋，尤其是本杰明·弗兰克林，受到易洛魁族人在欧洲人到来前几百年就已采用的政体的影响。
Western civilization, then, becomes another confusing category -- like Third World, or Judeo-Christian culture -- as humanity attempts to impose its small-screen view of political and cultural reality upon a complex world. Our most publicized novelist recently said that Western civilization was the greatest achievement of mankind -- an attitude that flourishes on the street level as scribbles in public restrooms: "White Power," "Niggers and Spics Suck," or "Hitler was a prophet." Where did such an attitude, which has caused so much misery and depression in our national life, which has spoiled even our noblest achievements, begin? An attitude that caused the confinement of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, the persecution of Chicanos and Chinese Americans, the near-extermination of the Indians, and the murder and lynchings of thousands of Afro-Americans.
这样一来，由于人类试图将从狭小屏幕观察政治文化现实得出的看法强加于错综复杂的世界，西方文明就成为又一个令人困惑的范畴—就像第三世界或者犹太教和基督教共有文化那样。我们知名度最高的小说家最近声称，西方文明是人类最伟大的成就—这种态度在平民百姓中也大有市场，只要看看公共厕所里的涂鸦就知道了：“白人权力”、“黑鬼和西班牙佬可恶”、“希特勒是预言家”。此类带给我们的国民生活如此深重的苦难和绝望、甚至玷污了我们最辉煌成就的态度是如何出现的？这种态度导致了日裔美国公民在第二次世界大战期间遭受拘禁，导致了墨西哥裔和华裔美国人遭受迫害，致使印第安人几乎被灭绝，致使成千上万的非洲裔美国人被谋杀，被以私刑处死。
The Puritans of New England are idealized in our schoolbooks as the first Americans, "a hardy band" whose discipline razed the forest and brought order to the New World (a term that annoys Native American historians). Industrious, responsible, it was their "Yankee ingenuity" and practicality that created the work ethic.
在我们的教材中，新英格兰的清教徒被理想化地描述为最早的美国人， “吃苦耐劳的一批人”，他们严格的行为准则把森林夷为平地，给新世界（一个令美国本土历史学家们耿耿于怀的名称）带来了秩序。他们勤勉尽责，正是他们那“扬基式的机灵”和务实精神创立了职业道德。
The Puritans, however, had a mean streak. They hated the theater and banned Christmas. They punished people in a cruel and inhuman manner. They killed children who disobeyed their parents. They exterminated the Indians, who had taught them how to survive in a world unknown to them. The Puritan legacy of hard work and meticulous accounting led to the establishment of a great industrial society, but there was the other side -- the strange and fearful attitudes of that society toward those different from the elect.
然而，那些清教徒生性也有卑劣的一面。他们憎恶戏剧演出，禁止圣诞节庆。他们惨无人道地惩罚他人。他们处死违抗父母旨意的孩子。他们把教会自己如何在一个陌生的世界生存的印第安人屠杀殆尽。从清教徒那里遗传下来的勤奋和精于计算促成了一个伟大的工业社会的建立，但是还有另一面—那就是这个社会对待那些上帝选民以外的人的奇怪可怕的态度。
The cultural attitudes of that early elect continue to be voiced in everyday life in the United States; the president of a distinguished university, writing a letter to the Times, belittling the study of African civilizations; the television network that promoted its show on the Vatican art with the boast that this art represented "the finest achievements of the human spirit."
那些早期的上帝选民们的文化观念在美国的日常生活中继续被传扬；一所著名大学的校长给《时代周刊》写信，贬低非洲文明研究的意义；电视网为一档有关梵蒂冈艺术的节目做宣传时夸耀说，这一艺术代表了“人类精神最优秀的成就。”
When I heard a schoolteacher warn the other night about the invasion of the American educational system by foreign curricula, I wanted to yell at the television set, "Lady, they're already here." It has already begun because the world is here. The world has been arriving at these shores for at least 10,000 years from Europe, Africa, and Asia. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, large numbers of Europeans arrived, adding their cultures to those of the European, African, and Asian settlers who were already here, and recently millions have been entering the country from South America and the Caribbean.
一天晚上，当我听到一位教师大谈国外课程侵入美国教育体系的威胁时，我真想对着电视机大喝一声：“女士，它们已经来了。”侵入已然发生，因为整个世界已经涌入。来自欧洲、非洲、亚洲的世界各地的人们从东西海岸涌入，至少已有一万年之久。在19世纪末和20世纪初，大批欧洲人来到这里，把他们的文化添进已经居住着的欧洲、非洲和亚洲移民的文化中，近来又有数百万来自南美和加勒比海地区的移民涌入。
North America deserves a more exciting destiny than as a storeroom of "Western civilization." We can become a place where the cultures of the world crisscross. This is possible because the United States and Canada are unique in the world: The world is here.
北美理应担负起比充当“西方文明”的储藏库更令人激奋的使命。我们可以成为世界不同文化的交汇地。这是可能的，因为美国和加拿大与众不同：世界在此交汇。
